Humbug – Bob Cratchit, Hope

Bob Cratchit was clerk for the meanest miser in town, perhaps the world. He worked 12-hour days filled with abuse from his merciless employer while grossly underpaid. He earned the equivalent of $100 in today’s funds for 60 hours of work! Dickens writes of the Cratchit family:

They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time…